


The Bonding Process

by Rasalahuge



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, X-23 (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: (minor) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Assassins, Backstory, Bamf X-23, Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, Clones, Gen, Hurt, Self-Harm, The Bad Batchers, not much comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 16:12:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6812773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasalahuge/pseuds/Rasalahuge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five people who changed X-23's life and one person whose life was never the same because of her.</p><p>Follow the life of Laura, X-23, one of the enhanced clone experiments as she wanders a galaxy entrenched in the Dark Side and tries to find some purpose to her life that isn't doling out death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bonding Process

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Процесс образования связей](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14093373) by [Akitai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akitai/pseuds/Akitai)



> This is shameless self-indulgence and me wanting to put my very favourite clone ever in with my other favourite clones and have it work.
> 
> You probably don't need to know much about X-23 to read this but if you want there is a spoiler-y summary of her character at the end of this story. This story also includes characters from the unaired Clone Wars Season 7 episode arc with the Bad Batchers and Echo, no particular spoilers but you might not recognise the characters.
> 
> Fair warning this story is written in reverse chronological order. I don't know if it works, someone should let me know.
> 
>  **TRIGGER WARNINGS** Laura has a sucky life. Like, really, really sucky. Read those tags and take heed. This is not a good place to be. On top of the tag warnings I should probably add warnings for: lots of murder and what is essentially mass abortion of several hundred embryos. **Read this story with care people**

They find the carbonite statue in the Emperor’s Palace, four years after the Battle of Endor. It is well hidden, tucked into a room and forgotten. Luke looks up at the figure, a young woman dressed in a skin-tight suit wearing boots and gauntlets. She is perfectly frozen, perfectly preserved but Luke can still feel the agony radiating from her. It is not physical pain; her face is almost serene despite what was no doubt a painful freezing process, but emotional agony. Getting a feeling for someone’s Force presence while they are frozen is not easy but it is possible and this woman feels… hunted. Like a cornered predator.

“I don’t believe it,” The man beside him whispers, looking up at the figure. He is old, incredibly old, but his senses are as good, if not better than Luke’s ability to use the Force, and so he was sent to try and track down any more traps or items abandoned in the Imperial Palace. He has been with the Rebellion for years, answers to nothing but Hunter and no one knows where he came from or why he can do the things he can do. The one time, only time, they have seen him mention the past was when one of the old clones, a man by the name of Rex, turned up and they sat talking quietly about people no one else knew. Names like Crosshair and Wrecker and Cody and Echo were mentioned, all of them dead. Rex is gone now, age stealing him away, and Luke knew that Hunter had wept at his funeral. The look on his face then, of utter grief and loneliness, is the same as on his face now.

“Do you know her?” Luke asks though he already knows the answer. The look on Hunter’s face would not be so painful otherwise.

“That’s my sister,” Hunter says. “I haven’t seen her in… hell it must be twenty eight years,” His voice cracks slightly. “I didn’t know she was still alive. Since Rex… I thought I was the last one left,”

With that statement it isn’t much of a question. They remove Hunter’s sister from the wall and take her to a medical centre. The medics are worried about defrosting the carbonite. She has been in it for at least four years; from Hunter’s estimates it could be as many as eighteen years. Hunter however isn’t worried, he insists she will be fine and eventually, unable to argue with him any longer, they agree to defrost her.

To everyone’s surprise, except Hunter’s, the young woman wakes almost instantly. There is no hibernation sickness, no damage to her eyes. She blinks a few times and then her eyes zero in on Hunter. He smiles at her and it is the first time Luke has ever seen him genuinely happy about something.

“Hey there X,” Hunter says stepping forward, his ancient joints creaking, to take hold of her hands. “Long time no see,”

“Hunter,” the woman, X, says quietly. Her eyes, Luke realises, are the same brown as Hunter’s and they have the same look in them. Hunter’s name is an accurate description, Luke knows, this X is definitely his sister.

“Little sister,” Hunter says gently, “You are beautiful,”

“The Emperor…” X begins.

“Dead,” Luke tells her, “For four years now,” X closes her eyes and a look of complete and utter relief crosses her face. “Can you tell us what happened? He had you frozen in carbonite,”

“It’s a long story,” X says quietly.

“We have the time X,” Hunter tells her, “We have all the time in the world,” It’s a lie, Luke knows, because Hunter is old, too old. But it seems to be enough for X. She turns to Luke and bows her head respectfully.

“Master Jedi,” She says and Luke has no idea how she knows that, he isn’t wearing his lightsaber in this room out of deference to the uncomfortable medics. “My name is Lau Ra, called Laura, operating number X-23. I am a clone and a killer. I am a daughter, a sister, a niece, a friend and a mother.

“Despite everyone’s best efforts, I am a person.”

Luke bows in return.

“It is an honour to meet you Lau Ra. Please, tell me your story,”

So she does.

**1\. Mara Jade**

Life as Emperor Palpatine’s personal assassin is cold and dark and filled with blood. X-23 doesn’t sleep, she doesn’t dare to in Palpatine’s home and can’t when she is out in the galaxy drowning in blood. If anyone can find a way to kill her and make it stick it is Palpatine. Instead, at night, she hides away in her room and draws blood from her arm with her cortosis blades. She sits and she thinks about Asajj who gave her the weapons and how she was gone. She sits and she thinks about how Cut had taught her she was more than a weapon, how she was a person. She sits and she thinks how she used to do this as a child, a warm, strong arm wrapped around her as Hunter did his best to anchor her.

The first time she sees a face she knows when she is sent out to kill she wishes desperately that she had the option of failing. She knows however that she doesn’t. Her handlers are too close to escape and if she does not do as bidden then they will only use the trigger scent and make her anyway. The rebel, one of the few who didn’t look at her with outright distrust or hatred during her time with them, looks at her with an expression of utter betrayal. X-23 is not Laura, not anymore, she is a weapon. She cannot afford to have feelings. She kills the rebel without hesitation and wonders why it hurts so much. She has done this before, she spent years as a child doing this, it should not hurt.

It does. She wishes desperately for the apathy of her childhood. Back before she destroyed the training complex at her adoptive mother’s request. Back before she knew Cut Lawquane or Asajj Ventress. Back before she knew what love was.

The second target X-23 is sent to kill that she recognises is a small group of clones who defected. They fight with the rebels now, she knows, trying to take back just a small piece of the honour they lost when the Emperor activated their chips. She has never interacted much with the regular clones, the only one she ever knew was her adoptive uncle Cut, but she still feels tied to them in a way she cannot explain. One of them asks who she is as she stares at them. X-23 doesn’t know why she tells them, maybe she just wants to acknowledge that she is still real, still a person and more than the killer the Emperor makes her.

They call her sister. They forgive her even as she kills them, as swiftly and mercifully as her orders allow. After all they know what it is to be made into killers against their will.

The Emperor is pleased when she returns, still soaked in her brothers’ blood. He is so pleased that he introduces her to a small, waif-like red-headed girl. She is called Mara Jade and she is meant to be X-23’s replacement. She does not have X-23’s healing factor or enhanced senses, but she is strongly Force Sensitive, more so than she knows. Mara Jade also loves the Emperor with a child’s love for a parental figure. Mara Jade will serve the Emperor willingly, loyally. There will be no need for handlers or trigger scents that makes X-23 a risk. Palpatine demands that X-23 train Mara, teach her everything that she herself had been taught. Mara is eight when X-23 meets her; she is the same age that X-23 was when she was sent out on her first mission. X-23 knows this is not a coincidence and when she takes Mara on her own first mission, two months after they meet, she watches Mara kill and sees herself all over again.

For six years they work together as partners, Mara taking in everything X-23 has to teach her. This includes, X-23 makes sure, the understanding that Mara is a person, that she has feelings and emotions. Mara is reserved, like X-23, and puts up a front of icy cold for the most part but X-23 fosters in her a warm core. Mara uses the Dark Side, but not the same way Asajj did, and her core of light is nearly unshakable. X-23 sees it, can feel it and finds herself aching with fierce quiet pride and joy. Mara Jade is beautiful and she is graceful and even in spite of the work they do she has a code of honour that X-23 was never allowed to develop. X-23 watches her and wishes to weep both with adoration and with grief. Mara deserves better than this. Mara doesn’t deserve to be forced to follow X-23’s life. X-23 however is a weapon and weapons are not permitted to feel and so she does not weep, she merely watches.

Mara is fourteen when she is taken away. She can match X-23’s skill in nearly every kind of combat, though she does not realise this given that X-23’s cortosis blades and healing factor allow her to triumph every time they spar. They are a deadly partnership, trust one another utterly. Unfortunately this is their downfall. It takes only one word, said in innocence in the wrong place, and X-23’s world is torn away from her yet again.

Mother, Mara Jade calls her. Just once.

X-23 stands, her face like stone, as Mara is taken away. It is happening again, she feels, it is like watching Asajj walk away not knowing it will be the last time she sees her mentor. It is like watching Cut and Suu and Shaeeah and Jek climb aboard the transport, fleeing to safety that she would never have. It is watching Hunter get called away and knowing he will not be coming back again.

It is waking from a world bathed in red to find her mother’s blood being washed steadily from her hands by driving rain as the fire roars in spite of it.

Love. X-23 does not love often, but she loves deeply when she does. She is nearly twenty eight years old, but she looks closer to twenty-one, she has lived through horror after horror. She has lost her mother, her brothers, her uncle and cousin, her best friend. Now she has lost her daughter.

Her cortosis blades are rarely free of blood in the days after Mara’s loss, but not with the blood of her assignments but rather with her own blood. She cuts and cuts until even her healing factor cannot quite keep up with the blood loss and she passes out. When she wakes she is determined to be too volatile, too unstable. She learns at last, the truth. Palpatine cannot kill her, nothing can.

The last thing she sees is the rising carbonite. She doesn’t scream. It is painful, but less so than losing her world once again.

**2\. Darth Sidious**

Asajj Ventress was her mentor and her best friend and now she is dead at the Emperor’s order. Laura has been wandering for six years, trying to find herself a purpose, and now she believes she has one. She wants justice for Asajj. She knows there is a fledgling Rebel Alliance and so she seeks them out and joins them. It is strange, to be surrounded by people constantly, to have to work with them and trust them even though they are strangers. Laura learns quickly that she is socially maladjusted, for all that she can mimic normal behaviour in the short term she becomes far too awkward and uncertain when forced to try for longer than a few days. It is not a surprise, she grew up in isolation spent time only with her brothers while training and since then she has wandered the galaxy alone. The only friends she has ever really made were her adopted cousin Shaeeah and Asajj. She tries, she tries desperately to fit in, but it doesn’t work.

After the first time she is sent on a mission and she demonstrates her ability to take down any and all resistance with extreme competence using only her blades her new allies become very wary of her. When they realise she does so with no care for her health because she will heal from virtually anything it changes into outright distrust. They do not believe her excuses; will not accept that she cannot tell them who and what she is. It has been eight years since she left the training facility, since she _destroyed_ the training facility, but she knows she is still hunted and she knows someone out there could still have access to the trigger scent. Keeping her past a secret is the only way to keep the Alliance safe from it. When they try to get her story from her by force Laura leaves, feeling cold and shaken and lost as she has not in years. It seems she is destined to be alone.

Laura’s disastrous spell with the Alliance lasts less than five months, she will not work with them again but she does keep them abreast of everything she learns and sees and does while out working towards her one aim. She will end the Emperor’s rule, whatever it takes. She knows he is powerful in the Force, can probably fight with a lightsaber as well as Asajj could but then Laura knows that being powerful with the Force and being able to wield a lightsaber are not enough. Not against her.

Laura has to bide her time. This is the first assassination she has attempted without orders, and it leaves her feeling cold, she had not wished to become this but for the Emperor, for Asajj’s justice, she will make an exception. She is twenty when she decides she is ready. Somehow that feels right. That feels… proper. Her brothers, all of them not just Hunter and Tech and Crosshair and Wrecker, they shipped out to war when they were the equivalent of twenty and she knows now, she knows what the Emperor did to them, what he forced them to do. She sets out for Coruscant, her plan perfect.

Laura reaches the Emperor, puts her cortosis blades to his throat and he laughs. He laughs and laughs and then she screams. The lightning was not something she had expected, but she should have. Asajj had told her about her former Master’s habit of using it, there should have been no reason to believe that Palpatine would not also use it. She knows, before the lightning stops, that she has made a very grievous error. The Emperor tells her what she should already have realised. It was he who encouraged her training masters to turn her into a weapon, it was he who gave them the trigger scent, and it was he who sent hunters after her, hunters that nearly killed her beloved Uncle Cut and his family. She learns that Asajj was killed because she was Asajj and a failed apprentice but Asajj was killed then because of her.

Palpatine has the trigger scent.

He has her beaten. He locks her away in a dark cell, far away from the light, like a feral pet that a master can’t quite bring themselves to have put down. He sends in animals at first, creatures she is forced to kill to stop herself from starving. Then he sends in people. People soaked in the scent that turns her world red. She wakes to find them torn to shreds, expressions of agony on their faces.

He sends in Vader. His _other_ pet. The one who killed Asajj. Laura doesn’t have any weapons, but that does not stop her from attacking him. She hates him, as much as she hates the Emperor. She snarls, feral and angry and tries to tear him to shreds. He however is not like Asajj, he does not engage her. Instead he slams her against the wall with the Force and pins her there until she gives in. The torture that comes after is terrible not for the pain but for the helplessness.

Eventually Laura realises that she cannot fight, there is nothing _too_ fight. She refuses to believe that she belongs to the Emperor, as Palpatine says every time he visits her, but she knows that he has leashed her. He will keep her here until she breaks and then he will use her as she was used as a child.

So Laura gives in before she breaks. She bows her head to the Emperor, fights back the tears, and becomes once more X-23. Weapon, killer, monster.

**3\. Asajj Ventress**

The farm is still burning and Cut’s hair is still dripping with water when he begs her to stay. Laura has been living with him and his family for six months now, they have weathered the burning of the Republic and the formation of the Empire from this safe little spot on Saleucami. It is not safe any longer however. Not after the ones hunting her finally tracked her down. The only reason that Laura is not bathed in her adoptive Uncle’s blood, in the blood of her aunt and cousins, is because Cut was once a soldier. He got his family to the pond, managed to wash off the scent which turns her world red and ends with death before she could get to him. Laura would like to stay; she has found something here, with Cut and Suu and Shaeeah and Jek that she can’t explain. They are her family and she doesn’t want to lose them. However Laura knows if she stays they will die, and it may well be at her hand. It is the same way she has lost all her family up until this point.

Laura leaves with the dawn, strongly suggests to Cut that he takes his family and flees far away. Cut is not stupid, he is already a deserter and he was planning on leaving whether Laura stayed or not. The farm is burnt to the ground and even with her gone there is a fledgling Empire out there in the galaxy, one born from blood spilled by his brothers’ hands. He had not heard the command, his chip had not activated though neither of them know this just yet. Years later when Laura finally learns about the chips she will be grateful for that and hope that wherever Cut is he manages to stay away from anything that may trigger him. That however is not yet, right now Laura is alone again in a galaxy ruled by a new Emperor. If she is discovered now she knows that it will not end well for her, or for anyone else. There is too much use for a clone that can survive nearly everything and can kill whatever she is pointed at.

Still if there is one thing Laura has learned it is that she is good at surviving. She is almost twelve years old and unlike the other clones she looks it but she can still out fight nearly anyone she meets. She is without purpose but she knows what she will _not_ be, and that is a mindless killer. A weapon to be set on others. She is a person, Cut and his family taught her that, and she will choose her own path. For two years she wanders the galaxy, avoids the Empire where she can, and tries to find out who she is aside from a deserter. Then she meets another deserter, although the woman refuses that title as if it is something shameful and not the strength that Cut taught Laura it was. Asajj Ventress was moulded into a weapon, just like Laura, and just like Laura she escaped and is now carving her own path. Asajj does not like the comparison but she cannot deny it. Her blend of sarcasm and put-on charm should not mesh well with Laura’s blunt straightforwardness but somehow it does. Asajj likes her and Laura is simply glad to have someone who can watch her back.

They do not stay together constantly, Asajj is a bounty hunter and Laura does not like the idea of killing for money even if she knows she would be very good at it. Too good, she tells herself and refuses when Asajj offers to be her partner. Asajj pretends to be offended, but she understands, she would walk away from this life too if she could but she is older than Laura and Force Sensitive at that. The Dark Side clings to her, though she is no longer drowning in it. Laura has not met anyone strong in the Force before, is unlikely to again with the way the new Empire hunts down those with the talent and slaughters them, but she is interested nonetheless. She can smell the Force as it moves around Asajj, it smells like smoke, the warning that underneath the brush a wildfire is burning, untameable, unquenchable. She tells this to Asajj who is intrigued and amused. Asajj tells Laura that to the Force she feels like a predator, young but wary, the kind that learned early on not to trust but is stronger for it, not weaker. The differences between Laura’s heightened senses and hunter’s instincts and Asajj’s Force Senses are fascinating, and they spend many hours debating. Laura, Asajj insists, is not actually Force Sensitive but somehow she has the instincts of one anyway. Laura doesn’t tell her about her brother, who was far better at this than she will ever be.

Asajj is not family, Laura decides, but she is a teacher and, tentatively, a friend. One the one year anniversary of their meeting, Laura is fifteen and Asajj gifts her with what will become some of her most precious possessions. Two arm braces and a new set of boots, all of them fitted with six-inch long retractable blades made of one of the most prized metals in the galaxy, cortosis. Two in each arm brace and one in each boot. Laura practises with them until she can use them as if they were just another part of her. Laura likes her knives, she has many of them, but the cortosis blades become her signature, with them she can take down entire platoons of Stormtroopers on her own. She spares a thought for Hunter, her beloved brother, and knows that he would be smiling at her with pride as she dances with the blades. Asajj simply nods once and then challenges her to a spar. Asajj is very good, one of the best, but her lightsaber cannot stand against the cortosis blades and even with the Force she can only just keep up with Laura’s speed and agility. They are well matched but by the time Laura reaches eighteen Asajj cannot defeat her in combat any longer without cheating significantly.

Asajj rewards her by introducing her to alcohol, which has little effect on Laura thanks to her metabolism, and then to sex. Laura enjoys it but she knows she will not be doing it again; it is not something she particularly craves and Asajj is her friend, nothing more. They part ways the next day, Asajj on another job and Laura to free a group of slaves that are being shipped to one of the Empire’s slave-run mines. Once Laura finishes demolishing the mines and escaping with the newly freed slaves she receives a message. Asajj Ventress has died at the hands of the Emperor’s apprentice, Darth Vader. It is not the first time Laura has lost someone she loves but it is the first time it was not because of who and what she is.

**4\. Cut Lawquane**

Although she will not know this until much later the destruction of the training complex damages nearly twenty percent of Tipoca City’s structure, though no lives, aside from those involved in the enhancement programme, are lost. The Republic response, especially as there has been no attempt on Kamino since the Separatist assault over a year previous, is immediate and powerful. X-23 is forced to flee, like prey, with nothing but her knives, her clothes and a letter from the one Kaminoan who had treated her as a human being and not just an experiment or a weapon. The Republic is hot on her tail, with no idea who or what she is, and with them the survivors of the complex who want to take her back, to curb her, control her, and use her. She remembers the cloning tanks, her sisters who would have ended up just like her and feels her chest tightening with panic. She remembers the driving rain, blood running from her hands and the scent of fire on the air and it chokes her. She looks at her hands and they are stained red though she knows there is no trace of blood left. When she sleeps she can still smell that scent that turns her entire world red.

She is lost, alone and her chest aches. She does not dare read the letter; she does not want to know what it says and what it means for her. Instead she simply runs. Some deep, ingrained instinct drives her to survive, sneaking aboard transports, avoiding anyone and anything that might recognise her for what she is. For six months she runs, too afraid to stop, too afraid to look back. She is eleven years old, she knows there are clones out there, her brothers but not her _real_ brothers, who are her age and fighting a war. The idea of fighting, of killing, makes her feel sick but she knows nothing else. What is she if she is not a weapon?

Running however is exhausting and running for so long drains her of every reserve. When she finally collapses it is on a planet called Saleucami. She is found by a farmer and his family and taken in, despite the fact that she is half feral. X-23 can heal from any physical wound in hours, even amputation, but there are mental wounds in her that have been bleeding for years. She is a wounded, exhausted predator not a domesticated animal but the farmer treats her kindly, his wife sings to her as she rests and their children make it their mission to get her to smile. She doesn’t know why. X-23 recognised the farmer the moment she woke but he does not recognise her for what she is. This confuses her and she sits at the table in his home waiting for the moment when he will try to take her down and turn her over to the Kaminoans. It takes her a long time to realise that he is waiting for _her_ to do the same. He does not know who she is, but he does know she knows what he is and she is a stranger.

“You’re a deserter,” X-23 says when she realises and Cut Lawquane flinches at the accusation.

“Yes I am,” He doesn’t seem ashamed of that, only worried at what it might mean with her here. X-23 does not think about handing him in, rather she thinks instead of six months on the run. Of the purposelessness she feels and the way she knows nothing but death and wishes otherwise. She thinks of Hunter and her brothers who dismissed the regulars scornfully but who, though they would never admit to it, they wanted to know.

“I am too,” She says after a moment and Cut looks at her. He still doesn’t know what she is but he can see something in her that he recognises. He sits down next to her, not touching her but a solid steady presence.

“Tell me,” He says and so she does.

Cut does not feel like her brother, not like Wrecker and Crosshair and Tech and definitely not like Hunter. He treats her like he treats his children only not quite. It is Shaeeah who puts a name to what they are to her. Cut is her uncle, for all that he is barely a year and a half older than her, Suu her aunt. Shaeeah and Jek are her cousins. X-23 feels her chest ache when she realises this, they are her family. Not a replacement for those that she lost, but family none the less.

Cut is the one that sits with her when she finally reads the letter, when she finally learns her name and mourns for the mother she lost to the training complex, to that scent that turns her world red. Cut is the one who tells her that what she feels for Sah Ra, for Hunter and her other brothers is love. Lau Ra isn’t a human name and it feels too special, too precious for X-23 to use outside of family. She thinks about remaining as ‘X’ as her brothers had called her. Jek however refuses, but he also cannot quite pronounce Lau Ra correctly and instead dubs her Laura. Laura is close to her true name, but not so close that she feels choking fear at losing that special connection. Laura is… her.

Laura stays with Cut and his family for nearly a year, she learns in that time what it is to be a deserter, what it is to find something that isn’t death. She stays with Cut through the fall of the Republic, through the birth of the Empire. The end of the war, bought from Jedi blood spilled by Cut’s brothers. When they get the news she sits with Cut as he weeps and doesn’t say anything. She wonders about her own brothers, wonders if Hunter and Wrecker and Tech and Crosshair were even alive to kill the Jedi. Cut doesn’t want to believe it, that the Jedi would betray them, but the other option is that his brothers murdered them in cold blood and he doesn’t want to believe that either. Cut has taught Laura there is more to life than death, but it seems that their brother’s haven’t been taught the same.

It is at the end of the year that the Empire finally catches up with them. Or rather that Laura’s past catches up to them. The ones that survived her destruction of the complex, they find her. Cut returns from a visit to the next town over, listening to rumours about the Empire, with a new tea for Suu to try. Laura isn’t there, out with Shaeeah in the fields learning how to be a young girl and not a weapon, but when they return Jek has crashed into his parents spilling the freshly brewed tea everywhere.

The scent hits Laura and everything turns blood red.

That is when they move in.

**5\. Hunter**

The training centre is all X-23 knows. Every day she moves from the white, blank walls of her room through the white blank walls of the corridors to the med lab where she is studied and tested, then she is moved to the training room and then she is moved back. All X-23 is taught is death, all she sees are the blank faces of the Kaminoan scientists. X-23 does not know what outside is, she does not know what a brother is, and she does not know what love is. This does not stop feelings bubbling up in her chest when Sah Ra reads stories to her. It does not stop feelings bubbling up when she hears her brothers training nearby. It does not stop the cold, sinking feeling when Zan Dir brings out a new test or a new way of training. All it means is she does now know what it is she is feeling. How could she when she was raised by a Kaminoan scientist who does not understand humanoid emotions?

She is alone in a world of white and a world of death until the day she isn’t anymore. She has met her brothers once before, ordered to spar against them while her technique was observed. She is six when she joins them for more than a single spar, though ages mean even less than feelings to X-23. The four boys are bigger than her, strapping adolescents in the midst of the worst part of puberty. They greet her warily, remembering how well she held them off, her on her own and them working as a team, but that fades quickly. Tech and Crosshair and Wrecker soon start to tease and torment her, to make jokes about her age and her height and anything they can think of. She doesn’t let them get away with it, she gives back just as good as she gets, but they are delighted rather than annoyed by this. They adopt her, teach her everything they know, and treat her as just another one of them. They call her ‘X’ in lieu of another name and they dote on her the way big brothers around the galaxy do (not that she knows this either).

She doesn’t know why, despite her annoyance at their attitudes, they make her feel warm and safe in a world that has, until now, been cold and brutal. The only warmth she has ever known has been curled up in Sah Ra’s lap listening to stories, but now she is warm whenever she is with them. To her brothers she is not an oddity; she is not a thing, an experiment, but their little sister. X will not realise until much later what it is they mean to her, let alone put it into words, but she does eventually realise that she loves them. They quickly become a steady constant in her life, an anchor as her training becomes ever more brutal, ever harsher.

Her last brother is Hunter. From the first day they meet X knows that Hunter is special. Hunter understands X in a way that no others do and no others will again. He understands when the sounds of millions of clones training not far away becomes overwhelming, when the scents of their training facilities drive her to the brink of a breakdown, head throbbing and aching. More than that Hunter understands her need to _move_ , to stalk through the training facilities in search of some nameless thing. In short, he knows and understands the need to _hunt_ , he did after all come by his name honestly.

X knows, instinctively, that although her brothers train with her they are being trained for different purposes. Where her brothers are trained to work as a team, to use their differing talents and enhancements to complete the mission she is trained to work alone. Where they are taught to shoot a foe on a battlefield, to aim for the head or the centre of mass for a clean kill, she is taught the weak points of dozens of species. There is blood on her hands by the time she is seven, animals for now but some part of X’s mind knows that it is only a matter of time before that changes. She learns how to kill someone quickly, how to do it slowly, how to make it look like an accident.

She is sent out on her first mission at age eight. She does not know for many years that this marks her as different for more reasons than her gender and her skillset. It will be several months before the war breaks out, before the Jedi discover the army built for them. She comes back, blood dripping from her hands, unable to name the feeling that chokes in her chest, suffocating something. Sah Ra sees her and turns away, her expression pained. Much, much later she will wear the same expression when a tiny girl with red hair and brilliant green eyes does the same and she will finally know what it was that suffocated in her that day. Her innocence.

By the time X is almost ten years old she has seen more death than even the most battle hardened ‘regular’ (as they have begun to call the other clones they are never allowed to talk to) has ever seen. Something in her chest tightens at every death, sometimes it is the only thing she feels as she stares down at the corpse that had been breathing moments ago. Her life is blankness and exhaustion and sometimes she feels nothing, even when she takes one of her many, many knives to her own skin. She watches it bleed red and watches it heal over, no blemish left behind.

She still warms when she spends time with her brothers, but there is an exhaustion that accompanies that and X pulls away from them, unable to speak, unable to do anything but stare at them and wish… wish… she does not know what she wishes for. Feelings are not her strong suit. Hunter is the only one who can elicit any sort of response from her beyond apathy and exhausted vague amusement. He holds her as she cries, holds her as she carves up her arm and holds her as it heals seconds later with no sign that there had ever been a wound. She is empty inside, but slightly less so when Hunter is with her. He is an anchor for her, teaching her how to hold on.

When they take him away she is devastated. She knows why. She killed her trainer last week and she can’t even remember why. The kindly old Mando’a had merely told her that she was the best student he had ever had; he said he was proud of her accomplishments. He had hugged her, embraced her the way Hunter did and it had felt wonderful. Then there was a scent, one she knew but could not name and everything turned deep, blood red. When she woke up he was dead, torn to pieces and his blood was on her hands and her blades.

Hunter was taken away as punishment. She did not see her brother again, and her world already cold and blank descended into a deep black pit until there was nothing but darkness and blood. There is no one here to hold her when she cuts into her own arms.

It changes eventually, in a way she cannot understand. Will not understand. Not for years.

Her orders come on datapads pushed under the door of her room. The last order is no different from the others, except for one thing. The target.

When the door opens she is ready, her knives are in her hands. She doesn’t even think twice about the surprise on the face of the Kaminoan who had brought her daily rations. She simply lunges out and watches, dispassionately, as the tall scientist falls to the floor. She does not stop, does not wait. She has a target, she has an extraction point, and she has a time limit. That is all she needs. There is no difference to her between killing Kaminoans, dismantling droids, as there is in killing anything else.

X finds the cloning facilities easily. She comes to a halt, startled from her mission focus as she stares up at bank upon bank of embryos. This is the right one, she knows, those are not regular clones. No they are her sisters. Each one bred to be like her. Here, soaring up above her are hundreds upon hundreds of her sisters who will grow up just like her. X closes her eyes, thinks about Hunter and his quiet pride. She thinks about the look in his eyes, the sadness and grief as they were parted for the last time. She had screamed for him but it hadn’t stopped them from taking him away. Feelings are not her strong suit but she knows that Hunter would not like this. Hunter would hate it.

It makes what she does next that much easier. She has a target and, for the first time ever, she has the motivation. Destroying the cloning tanks is easy, making sure the computers are so corrupted that they cannot hope to have any trace of her genetic profile left is only marginally harder. X walks out, her hair clinging with soot, to the extraction point. There is only one target she has failed to find and destroy but she knows where he is and that is fine.

X steps out into the driving ran, her eyes focused on the tall figure looming over a fallen Kaminoan. Zan Dir does not stand a chance; he is dead in seconds and something hot, vicious and satisfied rises up in her chest. He will not take anyone else away from her.

“Oh my darling,” Sah Ra whispers, “My dear, dear beautiful child. You are a wonder,” She presses a letter into X’s hand, “Just in case,” She says. Then she hugs X, pulls her into an embrace that is warm and safe and reminds X of when they used to sit together and read. That has not happened for years and X relishes the reminder now. Behind them the training complex burns, above them the skies thunder and crash. X is oblivious to both and instead buries herself into Sah Ra’s arms. She breathes in deeply, trying to catch the scent of this Kaminoan, the only one who was ever kind to her.

Something catches at her nose.

X’s world turns red.

When she wakes up there is only death on her hands.

**\+ 1. Sah Ra**

Sah Ra is one of Kamino’s best geneticists, certainly she is a far superior one to Ko Sai and the fact that she has been overlooked again and again for position of Chief Scientist is not one that sits well with her. That is why when she is approached to assist with technical difficulties they are having on the physical enhancement experiment she is happy to assist. Sah Ra knows that the Prime Minister has great hopes for the physical enhancements they are experimenting with and a success could earn her several favours.

“The problem resides with getting the changes to the genetic structure to bond,” Zan Dir, the former chief scientist on the enhancement experiment explains to her with a sour expression. “Something about the bonding process is causing a dramatic breakdown in the genetic sequencing,”

“Then there is a flaw in your bonding process,” Sah Ra replied calmly, “let me work,” She says and Zan Dir bows his head and steps aside, albeit not very gracefully. These clones are meant to be his pride and joy, proof that he is just as good a scientist as his late father was. Sah Ra is of the opinion that Zan Dir is overly arrogant in his own abilities and overly ambitious. She likes neither.

It is a matter of weeks to fix the bonding process for most of the physical enhancements that Zan Dir wishes to play with. Soon there are four clones growing, genetically they are descended from the same donor as the rest of the clones but each one has a different enhancement. CE-01 will have enhanced senses but particularly sound and scent as well as increased agility and endurance, CE-02 will have physical strength more than five times that of a normal clone, CE-03 will have a brain capacity and intellect far above most humanoids and CE-04 will have twice the visual capacity and heightened reflexes.

Unfortunately despite the initial flush of success Sah Ra and her team cannot get the final enhancement to bond. The enhanced healing factor _should_ make the bonding process easier but for some reason it does not. Zan Dir and the rest eventually give up, they decide that their successes with CE-01 through 04 are enough and set about preparing for them to be decanted. Sah Ra however is infuriated by the lack of progress; she knows that if she can fix this, if she can work out the problem then she will prove herself.

It takes her another week to work out what the problem is and how to fix it. The Y chromosome, the one that dictates the gender of the clone, is rendered inherently unstable by the bonding process. In the other four clones this will lead to nothing more than perhaps heightened testosterone production later in life but the accelerated healing causes it to break down completely. Thus, Sah Ra determines, if one cannot make a male clone with an enhanced healing factor then one must instead make a female one.

She calls this new line of female clones the X-series, in deference to their extra X chromosome. The first few are unviable, though the bonding process works. The twenty-third attempt she makes at a viable embryo works and she feels an upsurge of pride. This pride is not shared by the other members of the enhancement team, nor with Ko Sai and Lama Su.

“What use is a female clone?” Lama Su asks, “Females are inherently weaker in humanoid species,”

“That is irrelevant,” Sah Ra replies, “The advanced healing will make up for any deficiencies in strength and humanoid females are often far faster and more agile than their male counterparts. The purpose of this experiment is not to make large numbers of enhanced clones, but a selective team for special missions is it not? X-23 will have a skill set that none of the other Fett clone has,”

They are not convinced however they allow Sah Ra to keep the embryo, to grow it and to begin its training. X-23 is an experiment after all, and all of them are scientists, to discard an experiment without attempting to get results first is not their way even if they do not believe those results will be of use.

X-23 is everything that Sah Ra hoped for, with one, notable exception. The advanced ageing process that is used on the other clones does not work. The healing factor in her blood sees the process as a disease to be fixed and fixes it with prejudice. It is a long, frustrating nine months until X-23 is mature enough to leave her cloning tank and nearly two years before she is ready to start training. However when she does take to training it is like watching an Aihwa dance in the seas. She is quick and agile, she learns a grace that none of her brothers can match in less than half the time. Sah Ra is surprised to realise X-23 has somehow also gained CE-01’s enhanced hearing and scent capacity and has to go over her own records to see how that happened.

X-23 also smiles easily; she looks at Sah Ra with adoration in her eyes. Sah Ra is not prone to emotional fits, Kaminoans simply do not have the emotional capacity and they certainly do not have the overabundance of hormones and neurotransmitters that humans have making them overly emotional and confusingly unpredictable. Yet something about the way X-23 looks at her with those warm brown eyes makes Sah Ra’s primary pulmonary organ ache.

In her head she stops calling X-23 by her number and starts to call her Lau Ra. It is the name she had considered giving her own daughter one day, before she had realised that she would never find a mate with the superior genetics she would approve of. It is wrong of her to do so, she realises that she is emotionally compromised but she does not stop. Sah Ra teaches Lau Ra not just how to fight, but also how to dance. She reads Lau Ra stories from her own culture and stories from Mando’a culture that she learns from the Cuy’val Dar.

Eventually, when Lau Ra is five years old, Zan Dir, Lama Su and Ko Sai take a renewed interest in her and in her test scores which are, to Sah Ra’s immense pride, extraordinary.

“Highly adaptable, highly agile,” Lama Su says observing Lau Ra take on her elder brothers. They are more than twice her size – CE-02 is almost three times her size, already far outstripping his brothers – but she is holding her own. Lau Ra is a delight to watch. “And the healing factor?”

“Is extraordinary,” Sah Ra answers, “She healed from a fractured arm in two hours, without the application of bacta. From tests I believe she may be able to fully regrow organs and limbs, though I have yet to attempt an actual amputation,”

“I see,” Lama Su says.

The following day Sah Ra is furious as Zan Dir is given oversight over Lau Ra’s training. Lau Ra is _hers_ , her experiment, her clone, her… she stops herself before she finishes the thought, regains her internal calm. She is not being removed from the project entirely, she will still have input into Lau Ra’s training and physical health however it makes sense for Zan Dir to take over actual training. He has been very successful with the other enhanced clones and Sah Ra’s expertise does not lie in training soldiers.

“She does not have an inhibitor chip,” Zan Dir frowns at Sah Ra after reviewing Lau Ra’s medical reports.

“No,” Sah Ra replies, “Three chips were inserted, at varying stages of development, and all three were attacked and broken down by her immune system within two weeks. Her healing factor does not allow for such implants.”

“No implants whatsoever?” Zan Dir seems disappointed by that.

“I have not run the full range of experiments, after initial failures I saw no reason to continue along a failed line of enquiry,” Sah Ra replies, failing to mention that the healing process had not been kind on the young clone. Lau Ra had sobbed, begging for Sah Ra to end it. She may heal quickly, Sah Ra knew, but Lau Ra still felt pain.

“A pity,” Zan Dir replies, “But there are other methods of control,”

By the time Lau Ra is eight she can no longer be compared to an Aihwa, she is still a thing of beauty when she fights but Aihwa, while dangerous when in defence of their home, are not predators. Lau Ra most definitely is. She can consistently beat CE-03 and CE-04 in sparring, only fails against CE-02 when he manages to catch her with his enhanced strength which only happens once in every three spars. She cannot yet beat CE-01 with any regularity but that will change. Sah Ra however is not proud, not anymore. Not when she is forced to watch and observe the way in which Lau Ra has gained this proficiency. Her training is brutal, cold and emotionless. Lau Ra is trained not to be a soldier, like her brothers, but to kill. Sah Ra knows this even before Zan Dir sends her out, apparently at the behest of the one purchasing the clones, in order to complete a senstivie mission.

As far as Sah Ra is aware the ones who commissioned the clones have not yet come to claim them. However she is not permitted to ask questions. Her position on the team is shaky as it is.

Lau Ra comes back with a bleak, indescribable expression on her face, still wearing the blood of the one she had killed. Sah Ra learns that night that her species can indeed weep, that they can suffer from heartbreak. She weeps and she grieves and she realises that she cannot do this, she cannot stand by and watch them turn her daughter into a monster and a weapon. Something in Sah Ra has broken. She no longer desires her own advancement; the position of Chief Scientist is soured the moment she sees Ko Sai nodding with satisfaction at Lau Ra’s reports. She only wishes to free Lau Ra from this disaster.

It is slow progress, trying to find some way to get Lau Ra out. She hires on Lau Ra’s Mando’a trainer, she enlists Lau Ra’s brothers – though she does not tell them why for she has no idea what methods of control Zan Dir has used on them – and she starts to plan. They need somewhere to go, someway off the planet, someway of staying ahead of those that will seek them. And seek them they will. Sah Ra is not stupid, the opposite in fact, she knows that most of the Republic – even the Masters of the Jedi Order who come to claim the regular clones – do not know about Lau Ra or her missions. Lau Ra is valuable in a way that cannot be expressed in words.

For two years Sah Ra works tirelessly. Shortly after Lau Ra’s first mission Sah Ra is forbidden contact but this only distresses her for a short time. Yes Lau Ra will suffer from it for now, but it gives Sah Ra more freedom to move. She burns with desperation and determination.

Unfortunately she takes too long.

She learns this the day that their compound, isolated from the rest of Tipoca city but still connected to it, is visited by the most auspicious of guests. The Supreme Chancellor of the Republic.

The boys are not here, long since running their own missions. Lau Ra, however, is. She sits patiently in her room and then runs through her usual training regime while Chancellor Palpatine observes.

“Beautiful,” He says in a way that makes Sah Ra nervous. “Simply stunning. My dear Sah Ra honoured Zan Dir, what you have made is quite simply magnificent. You are both to be commended,” Then he turns and there is darkness in his gaze and Sah Ra knows, she just knows, that somehow the man is aware of her plan. “Tell me Zan Dir, how are the others?”

This is how Sah Ra learns of the rest. Lau Ra’s sisters, tank after tank after tank of clones, all of them with powerful healing abilities and enhanced senses. They have taken Sah Ra’s work and expanded upon it. They are still early in development, a few weeks if that, and a long way from being ready to leave their tanks but the way Palpatine looks at them… it is as if he is seeing some future that only he knows. Sah Ra looks and knows she has to stop this, any way she can.

The next day Palpatine is gone and Sah Ra watches with horror as Lau Ra’s training master is doused in the trigger scent they use to control her. He was embracing her in order to pass her a message, to warn her of what was to come. Lau Ra does not get it. By the time the smell of blood overwhelms the trigger scent it is much too late. Lau Ra has no concept of the trigger scent, does not understand that she has no choice when it is used. When Zan Dir blames her for the man’s death she believes him. When the boys return, and CE-01 who is Lau Ra’s anchor, is taken away she is told this is her punishment. Lau Ra screams for her brother, tries to reach him by whatever means possible and is beaten almost to a pulp for the effort. Lau Ra heals fast but she still feels pain.

“You will go out to the front,” Zan Dir tells the boys, newly dubbed Clone Force 99 – the Bad Batchers as they joke, “You will go out and you will not return. When you finish one mission you will go onto the next, or find one for yourselves if there are none available. This is your first mission. Commander Cody of the 212th has requested a special strike team,” Zan Dir hands CE-01 a datapad and the young clone, though he doesn’t _look_ young anymore, takes it with a nod.

“Yes sir,” CE-01 says and Zan Dir leaves. The young clone looks at Sah Ra, heartbreak in his eyes, “What about X?” He asks.

“I’m sorry CE-01,” No that is not right, if Lau Ra is being given her name then this boy whom she needs deserves his, “I am sorry Hunter,” Sah Ra shakes her head. He swallows and nods, understanding. He is a clone after all; for all that he is not like his regular brothers he was raised with the same mentality.

“You’ll look after her, won’t you?” Hunter asks.

“She’s only a tiny thing,” Wrecker, CE-02, agrees.

“She needs someone to watch out for her,” Tech, CE-03, says. Crosshair, CE-04, says nothing, as is his wont, but his eyes say more than enough.

“I will do my best,” She has lost her allies but she is more driven than ever to get Lau Ra out of here. And to stop Zan Dir and Palpatine from abusing Lau Ra’s sisters the way they abused Lau Ra. Hunter accepts that with some small grace and they leave. Sah Ra knows, in her heart, that she will not see them again. She only hopes that Lau Ra will, one day.

Her plans have changed. There is no time to be subtle, no time to wheedle Lau Ra out. As much as she hates it she knows there is only one option.

She has a weapon.

She only hopes Lau Ra can forgive her for what she is about to do. And what she has already done.

She spends all night composing two things. The first is a mission briefing, the same as Lau Ra usually receives but for the target. The second is a letter backed up by file after file of information. Sah Ra will give her life to see Lau Ra’s escape if she has to, but she will not leave Lau Ra without answers.

When the alarms go off, exactly an hour after she leaves Lau Ra the mission briefing, Sah Ra packs up the last of her things and heads to the exit. She has already destroyed all physical copies of her work and Lau Ra will take care of the rest.

For the first time in years Sah Ra can breathe easily, without dread or guilt weighing her down. For the first time in years she is doing something _right_.

It isn’t until Lau Ra is in her arms that she realises her mistake. She should never have let Zan Dir catch up to her.

By then it is too late.

Lau Ra comes back to herself, her hands soaked with Kaminoan blood and the wind and rain driving, flames scorching at her back. Sah Ra is already dying. She has barely enough breath in her body to speak, but she has to. One last time.

_“I love you,”_

She dies knowing that at least her daughter is now free.

**Author's Note:**

>  **X-23 summary** (for none x-men fans). Laura Kinney, known as X-23, is a clone of the X-man Wolverine. The genetic sample she was cloned from was damaged and the Y chromosome couldn't be repaired - thus the X chromosome was duplicated making her female. She has his healing abilities, heightened senses and claws (although instead of three in each hand she has two in each hand and one in each foot). She was created by a project formed by the son of one of Weapon-X's lead scientists (Zandir Rice) who hated Weapon-X. She was trained from birth to be an assassin and a weapon, at age eight she was nearly killed by radiation poisoning in order to activate her mutant gene and thus her healing factor so she could survive the process of bonding adamanitum to her bones, like Wolverine.
> 
> At about age eleven, after Rice and his partner Sutter had been selling her skills out to the highest bidder for three years, they decided to make more clones. Her surrogate mother, Sarah Kinney, who was also the scientist who successfully created her embryo, discovered that Laura had spared the life of a small child she was meant to kill and realised that X-23 wasn't just a weapon, that despite the way she had grown up she was a child. She helped Laura escape but was killed by Laura in the process due to being marked with a trigger scent. Other, horrible things happened to Laura after her escape and she was hunted for years before she joined the X-Men. **end of summary**
> 
> Yes I know, I shouldn't be writing new stories when I'm in the middle of others. I'm sorry about the delay on my Supernatural stories - I've just finished my doctoral thesis so they should all be getting back on track fairly soon (after I've caught up on this season).


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